Okay. Here is my interpretation of your essay in terms of the three questions (hopefully this will help clarify the gaps I am hoping to fill with the contest):
Why would a utilitarian contribute to cryonics?Because part of their budget as a realistic human being is for selfish needs, which includes things like cryonics and sportscars.
What would be an opimal way to conribute to cryonics?By signing up for it, if you happen to desire it, to satisfy selfish needs within your budget so that the rest of the budget can go to other things.
Would a utilitarian prefer to contribute to cryonics as a charity, or would they sign up for it directly?They would sign up for it directly, since the charitable portion of their budget should go towards other things.
I find these implicit answers… unsatisfying. They do sort of work for defusing those who would hate on cryonics because of the utilitarian costs, but I don’t see them as the strongest possible presentation of its utilitarian advantages.
First of all, the chances of cryonics working for an individual who signs up for it are not necessarily the most relevant criteria when considering total utility of participation in the movement. To give some examples, it seems like it would be dwarfed by the utility of hastening the advent of reversible clinical vitrification (bringing an end to disease as we know it), or x-risk prevention due to anticipating distant future existence. Neither of those is reliant on it working for an individual who signs up today, and they aren’t really the motivating factor for anyone signing up cryonics, rather they are more along the lines of spillover benefits.
Secondly, the argument from budgetary spending looks weaker to me compared to (say) the prospect of trading with wealthy cryonauts for increased funding towards proven causes like AMF. While cryonics includes many middle class people, it has a disproportionately high number of doctors and other comparatively wealthy people, who could potentially direct more resources to the causes preferred by the utilitarian if they saw it as advantageous to do so. This isn’t necessarily a sign of cryonics utility, but it is something about cryonics that a utilitarian might reasonably be expected to care about (more than the selfish expenditure aspect, I would think) and look for ways to exploit in some game-theoretic manner. For a simple example of this kind of trade, see the intro to this fanfiction.
Thirdly, I find it plausible that (some) total utilitarians could care a lot more about deaths averted than about lives created. Death could be considered a dignificant source of total disutility whereas new lives created do not add as much utility as deaths cost. Some antinatalists cite the prospect of death as a source of extreme disutility that outweighs the utility of birth/life-creation. But the disutility of this prospect could be reduced by making sure the death occurs dramatically further in the future (or never, depending if immortality is possible). If something along these lines decribes your utility function, it should imply a very strong preference to advance the state of the art in cryonics, and/or cryonics adoption rates (unless you think another form of indefinite life extension is more likely to work sooner).
Okay. Here is my interpretation of your essay in terms of the three questions (hopefully this will help clarify the gaps I am hoping to fill with the contest):
Why would a utilitarian contribute to cryonics? Because part of their budget as a realistic human being is for selfish needs, which includes things like cryonics and sportscars.
What would be an opimal way to conribute to cryonics? By signing up for it, if you happen to desire it, to satisfy selfish needs within your budget so that the rest of the budget can go to other things.
Would a utilitarian prefer to contribute to cryonics as a charity, or would they sign up for it directly? They would sign up for it directly, since the charitable portion of their budget should go towards other things.
I find these implicit answers… unsatisfying. They do sort of work for defusing those who would hate on cryonics because of the utilitarian costs, but I don’t see them as the strongest possible presentation of its utilitarian advantages.
First of all, the chances of cryonics working for an individual who signs up for it are not necessarily the most relevant criteria when considering total utility of participation in the movement. To give some examples, it seems like it would be dwarfed by the utility of hastening the advent of reversible clinical vitrification (bringing an end to disease as we know it), or x-risk prevention due to anticipating distant future existence. Neither of those is reliant on it working for an individual who signs up today, and they aren’t really the motivating factor for anyone signing up cryonics, rather they are more along the lines of spillover benefits.
Secondly, the argument from budgetary spending looks weaker to me compared to (say) the prospect of trading with wealthy cryonauts for increased funding towards proven causes like AMF. While cryonics includes many middle class people, it has a disproportionately high number of doctors and other comparatively wealthy people, who could potentially direct more resources to the causes preferred by the utilitarian if they saw it as advantageous to do so. This isn’t necessarily a sign of cryonics utility, but it is something about cryonics that a utilitarian might reasonably be expected to care about (more than the selfish expenditure aspect, I would think) and look for ways to exploit in some game-theoretic manner. For a simple example of this kind of trade, see the intro to this fanfiction.
Thirdly, I find it plausible that (some) total utilitarians could care a lot more about deaths averted than about lives created. Death could be considered a dignificant source of total disutility whereas new lives created do not add as much utility as deaths cost. Some antinatalists cite the prospect of death as a source of extreme disutility that outweighs the utility of birth/life-creation. But the disutility of this prospect could be reduced by making sure the death occurs dramatically further in the future (or never, depending if immortality is possible). If something along these lines decribes your utility function, it should imply a very strong preference to advance the state of the art in cryonics, and/or cryonics adoption rates (unless you think another form of indefinite life extension is more likely to work sooner).